


echoic memory

by dulcebase



Category: Watchmen (Comic), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Flashback fic, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, some mild one-sided adrian/jon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 08:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18027866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dulcebase/pseuds/dulcebase
Summary: The strongest memories are those we can vividly recall with one of our five senses.





	1. Chapter 1

The taste is metallic, thick and coating his tongue as it percolates from his throat, thick enough that he can smell it. The soft wheezing of breath hisses across damp concrete, cool against the bruise unfolding like a blossom at his jaw. The gentle scraping crunch of a ground-down heel leaving gravel — he braces for impact, then. It doesn’t come. The rubber presses hard on the edge of his gorget. it resounds with a chintzy metal  _tink!_

Whatever words are accompanying his laughter are drowned out by the hot burn of shame. It’s halfway through something about how just about any  _criminal_ could be lurking around ( _anyo)ne_ , he notes, in  _gold_ , with an attempt at  _stealth_ , at  _night_ ,)when he shifts — minutely, a hand on leather as if to push away, stilling through the speech until it comes halfway through a word; and in an instant, through the grunts and hisses of abused torso screaming, he contracts - body contorting sharply to deliver the brunt of the blow, bony-capped knee, to the hollow of the popliteal fossa. It never connects. The sharp kick to his armor nearly dents the metal, knocks him off balance completely(and he’s been a fool, he realizes, then: thinking the assassin lacks intelligence simply because Adrian knows  _he’s_ smarter than  _him_ -)

"I’d watch it if you’re not lookin’ to get a few more ribs cracked, kid.” Blake's smile, cruel, reeks of smoke. The contours of his face look even darker thrown into harsh shadow from the struck match: the edges of the mask, the irony of his mirth.

It breaks like the sickening crunch of bone still echoing through his ears, through his skin in phantom vibrations, breaks like the boot against his side. It broke with every palm-heel to his jaw, every leather-fisted uppercut. The gilded surface of twenty years of idealistic naivete cracked and now, peering through the breaks, the yawning, gaping portal, obsidian and existential void inked with the blackness in the hearts of man — the breadth of all that is human, the weight of man as man _kind,_ the suffix like some kind of bitter joke.

It is 1959 and he is rising from the ground amongst the dock rats, waiting for a government hitman to finish lighting his cigar. Each breath comes in wailing agony. There are hairline fractures in three of his ribs and the bruises are already darkening. It will heal nicely. Before this, he’s not had the pleasure of meeting the Comedian. The next they meet will hold no pleasure. The joke’s not funny once you explain it.


	2. Chapter 2

The feeling sparks up his skin in delightful static, zips down his spine and grounds itself thusly. His touch is neither warm nor cool; later he will learn it is an average temperature meant to be noted without comment. His grip could be crushing, or even with some massive show of strength, but it is firm without being restrictive. Their hands are nearly the same size, but he must lift his face to meet searing white-hot gaze. On his forehead lies a fraction of the sun disk, a sliver of Aten, burned in dark ink against cerulean glow. 

It is June,1960 and he is shaking hands with the fleshy trappings of a god, so they say. If he were prone to flights of fancy, he would swear he feels the particles vibrating in every nanoangstrom where their palms are touching. His touch ignites every hair on his body, every follicle too fine to lay still under its own weight pointing towards him like flowers to the sun. If the world had many gods, once, it has turned to him, self-created, anthromorphized only by choice and by the fading vestiges of what once was man. If the world had many gods, they lie dead at his feet with all the terror the name provokes.

The event is for a famine charity, and it is only fitting that by this he, starving in the light of quantum ambrosia, is fed. It is a light he means to swallow whole.

They do not speak, not really. It is enough. Polite introductions. This is what he needs to see, all of it. The part of his brain still fixed on facts and figures picks up some whisper of how much the event has raised, by whose efforts, and for once he seems little to care. This has been a pilgrimage of worship, or something of the like. _Something of the sort_ sounds a bit more accurate. 

The advent of Manhattan either proves he is god, or there is no god, and he does not care if there is a difference. It’s all the sort of thing that makes a man relish his humanity. Beneath his mask, Adrian Veidt is scorning it. 

The woman at His side (Slater, he knows from press dockets-) leans up and says something as if she does not realize her perfectly manicured hands are resting on the forearm of the being that shattered mankind’s knowledge in a single death; she lays hands on the enigma and asks Him to leave. 

"We will meet again soon," like the sun itself has turned to face him.

 _'Soon?'_ ” Voice tinged with anticipation in only the quietest notes. Jon can tell. He’s regrettably sure of that. 

"Relatively."And the warmth and gust of teleportation, at once blinding him in its light, wondering if _Doctor Manhattan_  just made a  _joke_. If, as he leaves to the stunned silence, he even _realizes_.

Long after, Adrian’s replaying the memory in his head to find out what he’s missed.

He tells himself that’s the reason. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wanted to make this fic 100% canon compliant but you really can't convince me this doesn't make sense
> 
> anyway it boggles my mind thinking about the actual ages since the graphic novel doesn't de-age the characters too obviously. i mean manhattan's outside of time and age at this point but the whole time i wrote this i kept going "wow adrian is like. 23."

**Author's Note:**

> before watchmen: ozymandias sucked and i'm really not here to see adrian done dirty like this again


End file.
